


glass half-broken

by waterlit



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Ambiguity, Angst, Character Study, Experimental Style, F/M, Introspection, Romance, What Was I Thinking?, burdens, old fic, the weight of the world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-17
Updated: 2017-06-17
Packaged: 2018-11-02 22:39:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10954176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterlit/pseuds/waterlit
Summary: They try to keep their love alive, futilely so, for they were never meant to be anything but solitary vessels.





	glass half-broken

Lenalee sits in front of the mirror and tries to smile. But her face is tight and her eyes are drooping and there's a wrinkle in her forehead, and heaven knows why anymore.

 _The war has taken a toll on you_ , her friends say consolingly, as if it the late nights and too-much coffee and stress levels haven't taken a toll on them too. They say, _everything will become better, in the end. You must have faith and hope.  
_

And so it will. Lenalee uses her fingers to push her lips upwards into the ghost of a smile, but all she sees is a tired face, pale cheeks and sad eyes, a person who wilts with weariness. She only hopes Allen will look past her expression, her exhaustion. 

But Allen merely walks past with a sheepish smile before tossing himself onto the bed. She gutters the candle and follows, crawling into bed and locking her arms tight around herself. She wants to reach out for Allen, but she can't see him in the darkness that falls gently around them.

No words pass between them, and a withering sea stakes its path between their bodies.

She feels like the bed might collapse from all that tension and that her insides may just cave inwards and succumb—at long last—to the empty valleys of despair embedded within her heart.

* * *

 

Allen slides his head on the pillow, from left to right, left to right and back again; there she is, queen of his heart and love of his life, and all he can do is lie with his back to her and his eyes closed and his ears open to the sound of her soft heartbeats.

The darkness weighs on him; he writhes and turns his back to the ceiling.

He wants to reach out and hold Lenalee's hand, but he can't. There is a wall between them, invisible but always there, which distracts him and drives him crazy, but he is unable to tear it down.

 _Why this strange wall_ , he wonders, _why, oh why?_ He touches the silver band around his ring finger, sighs, and turns back onto his side. His heart beats, faster and faster, but he wants to know that he's tried.

* * *

 

Allen walks Lenalee to the altar and holds her hand and drinks deep of her liquid eyes; a thousand and one other clichés follow after on the trail to eternity. The order stands; the members clap, clap , clap…

 _Clap_.

And the claps resound; the bride and the groom walk down the aisle, hand in hand. The trumpets blow and the choir sings and all Allen can think _is this, is this really what I want?_

He looks at Lenalee, pickled in white frills and glazed with sweet-smelling creams and he bottles love and tries to distil the warm prickling of his heart into passionate palpitations. He smiles and cuts the wedding cake, toasting her with bitter, ash-filled wine (the wine glass is half-filled) which he tosses over his shoulder when no one is looking.

Lenalee smiles at the cake and thinks of a time when she was young and no one remembered her birthday and who knew where her brother was and when the only thing she could see was a dark canopy above her little-girl head, with dark metal rings stitched to her arms and legs. The clanking of those pretty rings held her still, alone in her quiet world, and anchored her down into the deep.

Those days are long over now, and she has Allen to love and to love her now. Besides the whole world, that is. When the newly-weds go to bed that night, they are drunk and tipsy and fall into sweet slumber soon thereafter.

* * *

 

Allen has always lived for the world. Above all, his duty is to the Akuma and to the living; for them he wields his sword and dons his robes.

Once in a memory of distant tears Mana died and left him all alone, all _alone alone alone_ in the big, bad world. But the dust of the flowing years has stilled the pain and stoked his courage. Now he lives each day as best as he can. The Akuma come and go, and the shrieks and terrifying screams of sorrow latch onto his heart and lock it up with keys later strung among the clouds.

 _Walk on, Allen_ , Mana had told him once, _you must walk on_.

 _Walk on,_ he tells himself, _I will walk on and fulfil my promise to Mana_.

He discards the Fourteenth from his thoughts and holds his hand to his heart. _I will never stop fighting_ , he promises himself, _I will destroy time and bring an end to the evils that plague this world. I will cleanse the souls of the Akuma and send them to heaven_.

* * *

 

"Will you marry me, Lenalee?" Allen went on his knees, his warm hands holding hers.

"I will, Allen-kun." She sobbed into his coat after pulling him up.

_It was a weepy winter._

He tried to clasp his arms around her small waist, and he did, but the space between them seemed only to enlarge with every movement he made to pull her closer.

She buried her face in his exorcist coat, and pelted it with tears of joy, but when she pulled away, his coat was desert-dry and cold and empty and she felt a lone tear trickling out her eye.

* * *

 

Lenalee's world means everything to her. Without the puzzle-pieces that constitute the fibres of her being, she would never be able to live on as a complete, whole person.

"Coffee?" She walks into the Science Division, a smile (the usual) on her face.

 _Yes please_ , the scientists say, and they reach out for the mugs. Like a mother she dishes out the coffee as if she were dishing out bowls of warm beef soup and smiles upon them with jewelled eyes. Her heart bleeds as they sip the odorous beverage, and she shivers, as only a mother can. The world stands on its toes, and fear trips on end, and here she stands,

stands,

and wonders if she has enough thread to stitch their wounds close again. But the days are long and her hands are lean, and the fear presses on her and picks her seams apart at night. She knows now, she thinks, how a war widow feels, writhing with worry each night as she thinks of how best to feed her hungry children, with her husband at the front and the shadow of war stretching like a plague over all the land.

Lenalee sighs and smiles at the scientists and wonders how long more she can fight for them.

* * *

 

Once in a memory of war he came close to death (one of so many instances). Rhode was there, taunting, hinting and cruelly twisting their arms behind their tattered backs. _Self-destruct_ , she told an accompanying Akuma, licking the candle with Allen's blood on it.

He jumped into the explosion with nary a thought.

Perhaps, perhaps, that says something about how he has always known that he is ready to die for the world. His hand strokes Lenalee's hair gently; he wants to comb out the tears and the fears and bring her into utopia.

His heart beats softly, and the world spins on its axis. He is awake, and ready to guard it. He will never abandon humanity and the Akuma, even if Lenalee deals him a hundred slaps. The world is his to protect.

* * *

 

And this is the World, Lavi tells Lenalee, waving the card before her face. It speaks of hearts too deep to be filled and of love withered by relentless depth. _Fear death by grief,_ Lavi smirks, and he winks at the ring on her finger.

Lenalee wants to grasp his red locks and pull some out because of his words, but it's all she can do to fight the wave of tears upon the mention of the word _death_.

Death is nothing to her; to an exorcist, death is all in a day's work. But when the darkness flashes before her eyes—printed under her lids and hovering constantly at the outskirts of memory, and the darkness creeps under the curtains and slides between her and Allen and she can't reach out for the candle, then it hits her hard. There's never been anything more certain about it.

Her world—she will die protecting them if she must. She shivers as she remembers a battle, at sea and under a bulbous moon, where she fought against Eshii, drenched to the skin with sea-spray and fear.

She will rise again from her perch and stop the pendulum from swinging if she has to.

_Tick tock_

_Tick tock_

_Where to stop?_

_I won't stop_ , she tells herself, _I will fight for my world_.

Allen's face surfaces, and she wonders, as she tries to grasp a piece of him, if fate was really what threw them together.

* * *

 

Night falls again, stealing softly over the ancient crevices and hallways. A mission report lies strewn on the desk; Allen and Lenalee are draped in the shadows of dusk.

The candle burns bright at the door, and Allen turns Lenalee away and kisses her whole on the lips.

The night burns deep, and they fumble with their clothes and fulfil each other with moans and groans and sighs. Allen fills her up, but Lenalee deflates like a broken glass, and emptiness swells within her heart.

Hollow sighs ricochet within his abdomen, and he arches his back and tries to keep the wine within the glass. But Lenalee sinks down, down, down, and the wine flows out, blood-red with the scent of decay.

They run their fingers through tattered hair, and kiss; Lenalee tries to fill Allen up, but he makes her empty once again.

* * *

 

They were never meant to be anything but solitary vessels.

**Author's Note:**

> First posted on FFN in June 2010. 
> 
> Barely edited because laziness. But it would definitely benefit from some editing. Maybe someday.


End file.
